1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a digital delivery confirmation system utilizing a master server machine, slave server machines, private client machines, and public client machines that are mutually connected to each other through a computer network, which confirms the delivery of digital items from a slave server machine to a private client machine using background network communications between a master server machine and private server machine providing publicly accessible delivery confirmation status through a master server machine to public client machines.
2. Prior Art
With the rapid expansion of technology, transferring digital content from one machine to another machine has become a common occurrence. Virtual digital content includes but is not limited to intellectual property, digital music, computer software, cell phone ring tones, documents, video, and images. With the delivery of virtual digital content comes a risk to vendors and intellectual property rights owners from potential fraud in false claims of items not received reported to credit card companies and other intellectual rights organizations, primarily due to not having a method to prove that the virtual digital item has been delivered to a client. There is not a known, existing publicly accessible third-party system to protect rights owners and authorized vendors with proof that a digital item has been delivered to a client.
Delivery confirmation exits for physically delivered products through third-party physical delivery companies such as UPS, Federal Express, and the USPS using physical markings on packages and various manual and automated scanning technologies. These physical delivery confirmation systems provide publicly accessible confirmation of physical item delivery. Delivery confirmation of physical items provides the sender with proof that a physical item has been delivered to its destination. Existing physical delivery confirmation methods do not work with digital items due to the lack of physical attributes of virtual items. In an open client/server environment, the server stores digital content on a digital storage medium, and the remote client obtains a copy of the digital content from the server over a network using variants of the HTTP and FTP protocols using the TCP/IP network protocol. The software tools available in the open client/server environment can detect and potentially correct errors in the transmission of digital content such as in RFC 793—Transmission Control Protocol, RFC 959—File Transfer Protocol, and RFC 2616—Hypertext Transfer Protocol which detect when the transfer of the digital content has been completed, but only in respect to transmission control and potential error correction of the data being sent. These protocols lack the ability to provide a direct mechanism to provide stand-alone publicly accessible delivery confirmation status of digital items.
Existing open source and commercial digital delivery software systems provide delivery of digital content using the HTTP and FTP protocols, but focus on pre-delivery requirements i.e. payment, or providing information, and delivery of the content by hiding the storage origin of the digital items to prevent digital theft. These systems only provide a mechanism to deliver a digital item to the end client, and protect the intellectual property of the digital content from being downloaded without authorization by the rights owner or authorized vendor. These software systems do not provide publicly accessible third party confirmation of delivery.
Systems that use a client plug-in, or other client side solution to provide delivery confirmation such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,823,366 (2004) to Nakano requires software to be installed on the client system before obtaining a digital item. Not all receiving client systems can utilize a plug-in method. Some clients are not capable of installing plug-ins due to restricted software installation schemes, or system hardware/software limitations or incompatibility issues. This solution does not work for all cases of digital item delivery confirmation.
Closed point-to-point delivery confirmations such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,477,243 (2002) to Choksi et al. using facsimiles have the advantage of a point-to-point closed, controlled delivery and receipt mechanism and defined protocol through the PTSN telephone network. Digital items delivered through the HTTP and FTP protocols over the Internet do not have the same closed, direct connection characteristics used by the telephone network. This method does not provide publicly accessible third party confirmation of delivery and is unsuitable for digital items.